Stress is like wearing a flannel shirt when you’re washing dishes, you know?
One minute, you’ve got your hands in the water, scrubbing, the edge of your cuffs kissing the water. Next minute, the water’s bled up to your armpits. (For this reason, my husband’s told me that in Boy Scouts, they always said “Cotton is death”: If you’re wearing cotton when you’re active in the cold, it absorbs your perspiration, and can quickly bring you to hypothermia in bad weather.)
We were on our way to the local aquatic center with friends in my trusty, dented little Subaru. We passed a few yard signs for our small town’s upcoming election. I was listening to my 10-year-old chat with her friends about how excited they were about summer’s approach. Of course, right? But get this. “Yeah, I can’t wait for summer, with all this election stuff and the school shootings.”
Well. Is that how you know that your daughter is growing up in a different world?
I eventually talked with her about the local election: That despite she and her siblings’ wide-eyed ingestion of the scrolling newsfeed in 2016, elections are not usually scary things in our country. (This was less so in Africa, where she grew up, so I get that, too.)
A question. What are you…afraid of? 
Fear has this way of flaying us open, I think. Of laying bare what we see as bigger than us.
Worry manifests itself in vastly different ways. Some of us, for example, seek to staunch this bleeding of our hearts with intense control or safety. That is to alternatively say, some of us who struggle most with control actually are waging an inner battle with fear. As counselor and neuropsychologist Ed Welch writes, “One message is obvious: ‘If I imagine the worst, I will be prepared for it.’ Worry is looking for control….Worry has become your talisman to ward off future catastrophe.”
Why does it seem like everyone else my age is promoted, and I’m stuck in Gruntwork Land?
I should be married by now.
I wish that writing about my anxiety actually meant I didn’t wrestle with it anymore… I find the need to meditate on the words you, too seemed to resonate with in The Scribbled Heart: Fear-parenting vs. Faith-parenting.
So today’s quotable is from The Message–with a free chalkboard printable of these sweet words about worry: Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns…It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. (Philippians 4:6-7)
![Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language](https://www.janelbreitenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/love-languages-text-1.jpg "Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language")
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